Silvia Micheli
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Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 30, Open Papers presented to the 30th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand held on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, July 2-5, 2013. http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/sahanz-2013/ Silvia Micheli, “Architecture in a Foreign Language: How Italy has Recognized Foreign Architecture in the Last Twenty Years” in Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 30, Open, edited by Alexandra Brown and Andrew Leach (Gold Coast, Qld: SAHANZ, 2013), vol. 2, p985-996. ISBN-10: 0-9876055-0-X ISBN-13: 978-0-9876055-0-4 Architecture in a Foreign Language How Italy has Recognized Foreign Architecture in the Last Twenty Years Silvia Micheli University of Queensland Italian architecture of the 1960s and 1970s, thanks to the remarkable design and theoretical contributions of the Tendenza group and the Radicali, soon become influential in the international scene. The intensity of this revolutionary intellectual activity started to wane at the beginning of the 1980s. The exhibition La Presenza del Passato curated by Paolo Portoghesi at the first Venice Biennale of Architecture held in 1980 and Manfredo Tafuri’s publication of the book Storia dell’architettura italiana 1944-1985, through different ideological assumptions, marked the inception of a structural crisis in architecture and opened new horizons for the discipline in Italy. In the last decade scholars have dedicated their studies to the recovery of Italian architectural history of the ‘’60s and ’70s. On the contrary, less attention has been paid to the development of Italian architecture in the following years. So what ever happened to Italian architecture since 1980? Part of a wider critical study that takes into account new themes, such as the mutation of the Italian university system; the consolidation of a design method well appreciated abroad and the exaltation of the architect as practitioner and the subsequent lost of his intellectual and ethical role in society, this paper seeks to provide an introductory account of the history of contemporary Italian architecture since 1985. Focussing on the analysis of the reception of foreign architecture in Italy in the last twenty years, the paper aims to give an overview of the recognition of foreign architects and their work in the national context. It also tries to highlight how this “intrusion” has affected the crucial question of the existence of a national architectural identity in Italy. Through the examination of case studies, it has been possible to observe how these buildings, despite their peculiar architectural languages—sometimes self- referential, sometimes contextual—have been useful instruments for re-activating construction activity in Italy after the dark years of Tangentopoli. MICHELI 985 Italian architecture is experiencing a dramatic situation. While in other European countries, particularly in France, Germany, Spain, in recent decades major works of social interest have been carried out with significant transformations of the urban environment by providing citizens with new services that express the spirit of our time, in Italy such initiatives can be counted on the fingers of one hand, they lack a thorough scheduling and are due mainly to the intervention of foreign architects.1 —“L’Appello degli architetti italiani,” Corriere della Sera. This is the opening statement of the Appello (appeal) by thirty- 1. “L’Appello degli architetti italiani,” Corriere della Sera, September 11, 2005, online at www. five Italian architects, published on September 11, 2005 on the corriere.it; re-published with the complete list of signatories in Rassegna di Architettura e web page of one of the main Italian newspapers Corriere della Urbanistica 133 (2011): 55-56. Sera and intended to arrive on the desks of the President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi and at institutions such as the Ministry of Heritage and Culture and the Venice Biennale. The appeal, written by Paolo Portoghesi and signed, among others, by Guido Canella, Vittorio Gregotti, Franco Purini and Ettore Sottsass, emphasizes deep concern over the lack of project work given to Italian architects, which is likely to affect architecture’s generational turnover and belie the existence of a national architectural identity. However, it was an article written by Pier Luigi Panza, entitled “Architects in Revolt: Invaded by Foreign Designers,” that appeared in the same newspaper four days earlier in anticipation of the document, which defiantly deformed the terms of the discourse.2 In his article, Panza implies the existence of a “feud” conducted by Italian architects against international 2. Pier Luigi Panza, “Architetti in rivolta: invasi da progettisti stranieri,” Corriere della starchitects,3 presumed to be stealing assignments from local Sera, September 7, 2005, 21. designers. Debate on the topic continued animatedly on the web 3. For an overview of the phenomenon, see Gabriella Lo Ricco and Silvia Micheli, Lo until a significant result was achieved: the following year, the spettacolo dell’architettra. Profilo dell’archistar© (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2003). Venice Biennale with the support of the Ministry of Heritage and Culture (both directly implicated in the Italian architects’ appeal) organizes for a permanent Italian Pavilion to be housed on the site of the Arsenale. The establishment of an exhibition space uniquely dedicated to Italian architecture at one of the most prestigious international cultural venues may well have been a satisfactory conclusion to the whole affair, except that it actually disclosed a further set of real and urgent issues. In fact within the debate triggered by the appeal, one question remains unanswered and can no longer be postponed: is it profitable to accept, as a given assumption, an 986 MICHELI undeniably clear separation between Italian and foreign architects (and their works)—that is, to identify the “Italianity” of an architecture? In the catalogue of the eighth edition of the International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale held in 2002, Marco Brandolini wonders if someone is thinking of the image 4. See Marco Brandolini, “Che fine ha fatto 4 that Italy wants to take on in the first decade of the new century. l’architettura italiana,” in Next: 8. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura 2002, catalogue His text, which introduces the “Italy” section, is followed by a of the Venice Biennale of Architecture (Venice: Marsilio, 2002), 406-407. compilation of projects designed in Italy, but mainly by foreign architects: those by Italians—Mario Bellini Associati, Gregotti Associati International, Massimiliano Fuksas, Architects Garofalo Miura, Sottsass Associati and Paolo Piva—are outnumbered by those of foreigners—Arata Isozaki & Associates, Bolles + Wilson, Boris Podrecca, David Chipperfield, Diener & Diener, Grafton Architects, Jean Nouvel Atelier and Odile Decq-Benoît Cornette Architects. A similar mixture of Italian and foreign architects is evident in the jury’s selection for the 2009 international competition to design a New headquarters for the province of Bergamo. Out of the 130 proposals received, nine progressed to the second phase—those by Mario Botta, Josep Llinás Carmona, HLT—Henning Larsen Tegnestue, Gonçalo Byrne, OMA, Paul Tomato, OBR Open Building Research, Marco Brandolisio and Arata Isozaki & Associates. Only three Italian architectural firms were selected and eventually the project by Isozaki wins the first prize. Together with all other assignments entrusted to Isozaki in Italy—such as the Tower and residential buildings of Citylife in Milan (2003), the Olympic stadium in Turin (2000-06) and the TGV station in Bologna (2008)—the project for the New headquarters for the province of Bergamo justifies Isozaki’s decision to open an office in Milan. This intense design activity by Isozaki on ‘Italian ground’ aligns him with other internationals— the American architect Richard Meier, the Catalan Santiago Calatrava, the Swiss Mario Botta, the English David Chipperfield and the London-based Zaha Hadid—who stand out as the most active foreign architects in the country. Since the 1990s, the availability of the Italian environment to accommodate buildings made by international designers has accelerated at an unprecedented rate, with Italy never experiencing a similar condition of “openness.” Most of the projects for Italian cities developed in the 1950s and 1960s by foreign architects (among them proposals by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn for Venice) remained on paper. The MICHELI 987 same fate befell six of the eight projects designed by Alvar Aalto for Italy at Pavia, Siena, Turin and Como; though Aalto was able to build a church for the small community of Riola, near Bologna, and the pavilion of Finland in the Giardini of the Venice Biennale. In this context we should also recall the Mondadori headquarters in Segrate by the Brasilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who also designed the Piedmontese headquarters for the Burgo and Fata companies and also the exhibition district in Bologna designed by the Japanese Kenzo Tange. Rome, Italy’s most international city, has however welcomed institutional buildings linked to the architect’s country of origin: the Institute of Japanese culture by Isoya Yoshida, the Academy of Denmark by Kay Fisker, the Embassy of Britain by Basil Spence and the